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KindMind writes "Alfred Anaya was a custom stereo installer who branched out to making secret compartments for valuables, who the DEA sent to prison as a co-conspirator when a drug dealer used his creation to smuggle drugs. But Wired points out the bigger question: 'The challenge for anyone who creates technology is to guess when they should turn their back on paying customers. Take a manufacturer of robot kits for hobbyists. If someone uses those robots to patrol a smuggling route or help protect a meth lab, how will prosecutors determine whether the company acted criminally?'"

... is to legalize absolutely all the drugs, and put the DEA, et. al., out of business. The insane drug war is just another excuse to violate citizen's rights, plus it provides obscene amounts of money to all the wrong sorts of people. And, reportedly, Mexico has lost 70,000 of its citizens since 2007 to drug war violence. Is the USA keeping drugs illegal really worth 70,000 human lives? I don't think so.

I'm in favor of partial legalization and regulation. Smoking kills 300k a year. Something like widespread meth use could come in 10x, 20x that. The reason drugs can get banned is because they are so incredibly devastating to individuals to families and to communities when their use becomes common. Pretending they are harmless undermines other points.

The question is whether the benefits of criminalization, the avoidance of widespread use, can be achieved without criminalization.

> The people I know that do drugs have jobs and money. Drugs> aren't cheap. I bet the majority of drug use is of that type.> Friday-Sunday and at parties.

I think you have it almost right, allow me to make a quick adjustment here, afterall....as a drug dealer, I like to think I am an expert, I certainly have been doing it for years.

First of all, lets start here: Pot is the #1 illicit drug. When you hear "drugs", think pot, because there are twice as many pot users as the next 3 major illegal drugs combined. The majority of users use it, the majority of dealers sell it almost exlusively.

Your average drug user picks up once or twice a week, and while its expensive, its not so expensive that he can't afford it with a normal job. In fact, your average dealer is just another user who had a little money in his pocket and was tired of paying full price. Most of them, buy an ounce and sell 8ths, taking nearly their entire profit in product, bringing in just enough to get the next ounce. This works out of course, because he has other sources of income.

His dealer, thats me, started out like him, but had a bit more cash from a slightly better job (or some other reason, some even start on credit, seldom a good idea, but among pot users normally fairly safe and tends to get written off rather than broken legs). He sees return on his investment, but still smokes most of the actual profit, and still doesn't make enough to replace a full time job.

In theory, I wouldn't want to see it made legal, since I make money off the deal, but, when you factor in that I only ever started with this headache because I saw how much I was spending on flowers. I want nothing more than to have some smoke in my bowl after a days work, I don't make enough off it to care about the money aspect. Its not worth the risk for the money alone, its only worth it because it subsidises my, and my partner's habbits.

So yes, the majority of use is of that medium usage type by people with jobs or other means of gainful employment. I should know, they are my customers and no different from me, or any of the people I deal with. Are there some career criminals out there? Yup, met some of them too..... but they are.... outliers. Even the people whose supply comes from them down the road, generally don't deal with them directly.

Seriously, even the guys that people like me get it from are just generally, people who started doing what I am doing and moved on to growing, or had an opportunity to get into shipping/arbitage.

This is why it is little more than an endless game of whack-a-mole....the entire enforcement paradigm is based on unwarranted assumptions about who the dealers really are and our motives, which, are normally, exactly the same motives as our customers.

Not only that, but as far as I can tell, for every "junk box" out there (yes our derrogatory name for people who use those "other" drugs) there are a number of people who "tried crack once" or "have done some meth". Even with pot, I have been selling for years and I have met nearly as many people who have smoked pot and didn't like it as I have pot enthusiasts.

The Silk Road has been rather successful, and to this date, nobody has been kidnapped and beheaded, hanged, or robbed during any drug transactions. Plus, it seems that the quality of the substances made is much higher than those found on the street, and less likely to kill you.

My school had a few real meth heads when I was in high school. The harm that regular meth did was demonstrable in a way that made DARE completely unnecessary. A lot of students actually avoided meth because they saw the harm it did (damaged intelligence, rotting teeth, misc health issues, etc.)

Just calling the kid(s) on stage at a pep rally for 5 minutes and saying "kids, this is what regular meth use does. This is why we don't want you to use meth. Now Johnny, Susy, etc. please be seated." would stop 95% of kids from ever doing meth. It's not like a STD or something like that it's so in-your-face and repeatable that only morons (even by teen standards) would think it doesn't apply to them.

To be fair, many of the problems associated with heavy methamphetamine usage are not actually caused by methamphetamine. It's caused by the fact that methamphetamine is refined using some particularly nasty chemicals, and the poor quality laboratory equipment and conditions available to basement/garage/trunk/RV meth cookers is insufficient to produce a clean product. It's no different to how the high methanol content in cheaply produced moonshine has been known to cause blindness. Legalization, combined with government regulation, would go a long way towards mitigating these ill effects.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.

"There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal," said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.

The number of addicts considered "problematic" -- those who repeatedly use "hard" drugs and intravenous users -- had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said.

Portugal's holistic approach had also led to a "spectacular" reduction in the number of infections among intravenous users and a significant drop in drug-related crimes, he added.

Agreed. People really need to stop saying that as it tends to be detrimental to the cause. There are people who, for whatever reason (too much hassle, don't know what the dealer may have laced in, etc), don't do illegal drugs, but would at least try it if it were legal. I myself am in that boat.

What we should be asking is how many of those people would continue to use those drugs, using them in a way detrimental to themselves and/or others. While the first part cannot be answered (how can someone know

The last time I saw my father I came to the conclusion that he was an alcoholic. Turning him into a criminal would simply make the situation even worse. As it is he goes to work every day and makes valuable contributions to society. The only consequences of his actions are internal to our family.

Criminalize consequences, not whatever you used to get there. Criminalize violence and theft.

I'm in favor of partial legalization and regulation. Smoking kills 300k a year. Something like widespread meth use could come in 10x, 20x that. The reason drugs can get banned is because they are so incredibly devastating to individuals to families and to communities when their use becomes common. Pretending they are harmless undermines other points.

It's also devastating to individuals, families, and communities to take someone like Anaya and throw him in jail for 24 years. Pretending that it's harmless undermines other points.

"The reason drugs can get banned is because they are so incredibly devastating to individuals to families and to communities when their use becomes common. "

You clearly have no idea why Marijuana was outlawed. I suggest you investigate the matter, and you will quickly realize that your simplistic world view is exactly that. I'll give you a two word starter hint to google (just add marijuana): "textile industry"

Meth is rather addictive. And meth use correlates very strongly with availability. We don't know what happens with much higher availability.

How about this scenario.... price of drugs comes down, people don't need to buy pure meth anymore, addicts can afford to not inject it.... other, less potent drugs (which have been pushed off the market) re-enter, and many of the people attracted to stims.... switch to those.

Entirely possible. That's what happened with the reintroduction of beer and wine after prohibition. Whisky use fell not increased. That's why I favor regulation to try and make scenarios like that play out.

I doubt it though with meth, people like the very high levels of the drug in the brain. The more they are addicted the higher the level they want, the more they take the more addicted. There is no natural stopping mechanism like there is for alcohol.

Heroin? Why? When opium is available, and there is no pressure on dealers to make the highest profit off the lowest volume, do you really think heroin addicts wouldn't turn to opium in droves? Wouldn't pick safer, less potent drugs and forms of drugs?

Quite possibly. Moreover pharmaceutical heroin is far safer than the street variety. Addictive yes, but the major side effect of regulated use is constipation. Heroin is a terrific candidate for legalization and regulation. Meth and less sure of.

___

As an aside you mentioned alcohol. Prior to prohibition the average american consumed 8 gallons of ethanol per year. After the repeal that number became 1.5 gallons. America's lasting legacy of low alcohol use is a result of the changes in behavior brought about by prohibition. The history of alcohol is a mixed bag.

but he had not seen any drugs, only money. Should we legalise money? I think that the US has the craziest legal system in the world. The country that introduced the concept that carrying money to another country is a crime (called money laundering), given that I work in various countries for good money I want to be allowed to carry my legally earned money home with me but if I carry more than a trivial amount I am labelled a criminal...

Under the same premise a car manufacturer should be liable for assisting in a bank robbery because the thieves couldn't have gotten away so quickly without their ingenious device called the automobile! This is just stupid and the judge that made that poor decision should be shot, hanged, and burnt at the stake!

did you read TFA? he yelled at the customer and made him get the money out of there because he "doesn't want any trouble" before repairing the mechanism on it, then he later accepted future jobs from the customer.

he demonstrated that he believed the money was ill gotten when he freaked out and yelled at the customer and made him take the money away before he finished repairing it.

If I was repairing something and found a huge stash of money within, my first thought would not be that my client was a drug dealer.

My first thought would be something along the lines of, "Holy crap. That is a lot of money. If some is ever missing he'll think I was the one who took it. I don't want any trouble, so I'll tell him to take his money, make sure it's all there, and keep it out of my reach."

We wont have that, and I would not support us even trying to rebuild that, so long as we mis-use it to prosecute people for victimless crimes like drug laws. Thats why I have no respect for the so-called justice system, advocate not using it, not respecting it, and not talking highly of it.

Its just an abuse system now, and has been since before I was born. Thats what it is, thats the reputation we deserve, its why i cheer Anonymous when they get all vigilante. Thats what we need right now, a disintegration

Does a gun manufacturer or dealer go to jail as co-conspirator when the killer used the gun to kill people?

The dealer can go to jail if the sale was illegal--in other words, skirted the background check, knew it was a straw purchase, and so on. It's rare because most gun dealers know better, but it does happen occasionally. That would be for breaking the laws I mentioned, now if the gun dealer actually knew that the person to whom he was selling intended to murder, and in fact actually conspired with that person to help him commit the murder, then of course he would treated as a co-conspirator.

Very few background check violations are prosecuted. The Obama Administration's stated reason for it is lack of time and manpower. If the Obama Administration currently doesn't have the time or manpower to prosecute those who lie on background check forms, then why do they want more background checks, more paperwork and more forms? It's backdoor gun registration.

The goal is not gun registration, the goal is to create a complex patchwork of laws that makes exercising legal gun ownership much more onerous for both buyer and seller.

They want a situation where if you're not an active-duty member of law enforcement and you have any encounter with the police they can seize your firearm and arrest you on firearm charges even if there is no other chargeable offense.

Ultimately enough people will stop wanting to exercise their gun rights because who wants to get pulled over

I don't think an NICS denial is grounds for prosecution considering the frequency of false positives and people not having any idea why they are being denied.
The real prosecutions result from straw purchases and lying on the form 4473.

It's worth noting here the Fast and Furious [wikipedia.org] "gun walking" scandal. ATF personnel knew in the summer of 2010 that the straw weapon purchases (ultimately for about two thousand apparently high quality weapons) which they were allowing but deliberately not monitoring (allegedly as part of a plan to catch gun smugglers and their buyers) were going straight to Sinaloa cartel factions and being used to commit many hundreds of crimes such as murder. But they let that program continue another half a year until a border agent was killed in a shoot out involving two such weapons.

It's worth noting here that most of those straw purchases wouldn't have happened without ATF interference and we don't know what else might have been smuggled into Mexico in connection with those guns.

No one from the ATF has been prosecuted for assisting in these crimes. After all, they knew without a doubt in the summer of 2010 that crimes were being committed with those weapons, yet they did nothing for another half a year until someone too important to ignore died. In comparison, Alfred Anaya of the story is merely suspected to have known that his secret compartments were used for drug smuggling.

And none of Anaya's devices ever killed anyone while as of more than two years ago, F&F weapons turned up at over 200 murder scenes in both Mexico and the US.

And because the Obama administration is shielding the people involved, we don't know if the real purpose of the effort was to catch gun smugglers and complicit members of the Sinaloa Cartel or something sinister such as creating a false pretext for federal gun control laws or deliberately providing smuggling services for the Sinaloa Cartel.

Your comment sucks, but not even primarily because of the reason I just gave. It is thoughtless regurgitation, lacking in any wit. It's comedic brilliance falls somewhere between telling a woman to make you a sandwich and using a story mentioning Uranus to talk about "your anus".

If you are a small Mom and Pop operations (Under 5 employees) you are going to jail.If you are a Small Business (Under 100 Employees) you will get massive fines.If you are a Medium Business (Under 1000 Employees) you will get a stern talking toIf you are a Large Business (1000+ Employees) you are considered an innovator, any misuse of your product is not your fault.

The issue here is that the builder was obviously aware that his tools were being used for illegal activity but continued to produce them for those same clients. His knowledge was demonstrated by his freakout about the massive piles of cash and demand to have them removed, and the fact that he knew his customers were crossing borders with his secret compartments. (They were calling from places like Tijuana asking for repairs)

"I don't know what this is being used for" is a legit argument when there's a reasonable expectation that the product is not being used for illegal activity (such as in the stated case of building robots), but at a certain point it crosses the threshold where any reasonable explanation would point to illegal use. At that point the person making the product is arguably liable, since any reasonable person should understand what their product is being used for.

In the example of a robot, just making a robot that can patrol an area wouldn't cross that threshold. If, however, the robot was commissioned with the ability to detect police badges, interpret police scanner data, and incinerate packages if police were detected en-route? That would cross the threshold of "Well what the fuck did you THINK they were gonna use it for?"

As others have noted, he received a much longer prison sentence than the heads of the drug smuggling ring did (one who actually got a reduced sentence by testifying against Anaya, the secret compartment maker). They made an example of him.

I think the lesson of this case has little to do with secret compartments. What mainly happened here is the police wanted him to work for them and he said no, so the built a case to punish him. The trial was a joke, the testimony against him was due to plea deals and some of it was physically impossible to be true, and most of it hinged on building up personal dislike by the jury due to his lifestyle.

He refused to put his life at risk when the police threatened him, and they made good on the threat, even if he was within the law. Being within the law does not matter when they want to get you.

[The judge] sentenced Anaya to 292 months in federal prison—more than 24 years—with no possibility of parole. Curtis Crow and Cesar Bonilla Montiel, the men at the top of the organization, received sentences half that length.

This guy refused to work with the police, so he got over 24 years in jail with no parole. The actual drug dealers got less than half that. How is that remotely just? Maybe the guy has some culpability, but 24 years in jail with no parole? Come on. I hope he's able somehow to appeal with a better lawyer.

By work for them, the police wanted him to set up a front for intelligence gathering/sting, not working for them in a Hollywood style crime fighting skunk works.

You think the drug runners would leave him alone, to retire happy with rainbows in the sky? He'd be very dead, very fast. Look at what happened to the Texas prosecutors recently. The drug trade is a massive industry with powerful actors on both sides. Being a pawn in it is dangerous.

"The judge agreed with McCracken’s harsh assessment. He sentenced Anaya to 292 months in federal prison—more than 24 years—with no possibility of parole. Curtis Crow and Cesar Bonilla Montiel, the men at the top of the organization, received sentences half that length."

Just to be clear -- the article doesn't reveal the 24-year sentence until almost the very end. Part of the problem is, as usual (see Aaron Swartz) unchecked prosecutors piling on crazy charges to force a plea bargain, and one person who truly believes they didn't do anything wrong, and refuses to take it for principle's sake. End result: epic miscarriage of justice.

His mistake was in installing the second "trap" in the other vehicle. He could have legitimately claimed that he agreed to fix the first one out of a sense of responsibility for his workmanship AND fear that the guy would come after him for failing to do so. However, agreeing to the second one made it a clear money grab and it violated the California law. He knew the only way that the guy got that much money was through the drug trade. He should have told the guy that he had compromised his business by showing up with all that money in the "trap" and exposed him to legal liability beyond what he had agreed to.
I understand why he thought he was skirting the law, but he knew he was skirting the law. Once it went beyond merely knowing in an academic fashion that some of his customers were using his installations in an illegal fashion to having seen evidence (even though that evidence was not by itself enough to convict the customer) that a particular customer was doing so he had crossed the line. He crossed the line of plausible deniability.

Wow. Can you claim that "every low priced item for sale in the real world" must be stolen, because why else would someone offer to sell something for a low value if it might have a higher value? No, sometimes people don't know the intrinsic value of something. So everyone who buys something cheaply off craigslist does not have to be complicit in the purchase of stolen goods if they didn't know the goods were stolen. You're reaching a conclusion which may seem reasonable but which, IMHO, is unreasonable.

No, he didn't "know" shit. He had a bad feeling about his client, because his client seemed shady and not all that up-standing; but his client never showed up with hookers and blow, never chatted about the drug trade, never implied he was doing anything illegal. For all he knew the guy was a bounty hunter, which may occasionally get him side jobs to carry large amounts of cash from one place to another because uh... criminals take cash, and this guy hunts dangerous criminals, so dangerous criminals taking

The case hinged on whether Alfred Anaya knew that the compartments were being used to smuggle drugs. In this context, when he was repairing one of the compartments in question he saw that it was full of bundles of cash. The prosecutors argued (and the jury agreed) that this was clear evidence that something illegal was going on, most likely drugs. He could have said no at that point, but he didn't. I'm generally in favor of legalization for most drugs, but this fellow isn't as sympathetic and innocent as the summary makes him out to be.

That makes no sense to me. Large amounts of cash seem like a pretty legitimate use for a secret compartment in a car, in many neighborhoods throughout the US. The only way an ordinary citizen could have a large amount of cash is obviously through illegal means? I guess we really were never supposed to win.

Large amounts of cash seem like a pretty legitimate use for a secret compartment in a car, in many neighborhoods throughout the US.

"Seem" [sic] like? For what purpose? What legitimate business has to move that amount of cash secretly rather than using checks, money orders, electronic transactions, or making (much) smaller deposits more regularly? What legitimate business has to do so on a regular enough basis that it's worth having a secret compartment installed rather than calling in an armored car company?

I would argue that it was evidence that something suspicious was going on... not remotely illegal, unless there is an actual law prohibiting the possession of such large amounts of cash.

I know that ideally, a person should never be stopped from doing what they were normally doing just because it looks suspicious to somebody else, even though it's perfectly legal, but being members of a social community, we have at least some obligation to try to consider how things that we are doing could appear to other people, because once we realize how things might look to others, we may realize that we might need to change the way we are doing things.

I remember when I was in college, it was in '02 to give the situation a bit of context, and one of the courses I was taking was a digital electronics course, where part of the course involved building a working digital clock using elementary logic gates and chips only. Most people only worked on this in the electronics lab, but I had bought my own IC's so that I could work on it at home as well. During one of my break periods during the day, I was working on my clock in a relatively quiet hallway of one of the campus buildings... I was doing an experiment with trying to multiplex the power for the LED's, and so there were some neat flashing lights and numbers, when suddenly a campus security guard told me to step away from what I was working on and come with him. I had to go to the campus security office and was questioned by a couple of the security guards there. He initially wasn't going to let me even pack up and bring my electronics stuff with me, but I think upon noticing the panicked look I might have had on my face when he suggested that I leave this expensive stuff there, he relented. In the office, they then asked me some questions about what I was doing there and what I was building, and I replied completely truthfully. One of the security guards said that what I was talking about sounded reasonable, since they knew the professor I had for the course in question and had heard about the course having a clock-building challenge which apparently had been going on there for many years They needed confirmation from the professor, however... and I had to wait for the professor to come down from his office, and see me... confirm that he knew me and that I was genuinely in his class. I was then free to go, and later that evening, in his lecture, he bemusedly related a story to the class about how one of his students got hauled into the security office for apparently building a bomb He suggested that we only work on the project either at home, or else in the lab, telling us that the lab aide could be reached throughout the day anyways, and would unlock the lab for anyone in the course and allow them to work during the day even when it wasn't scheduled lab time.

The experience taught me something about doing things that look suspicious that I hadn't previously considered, even if they are actually entirely innocent, as I was, and being mindful of that fact gives a person a much better state of preparedness for the possible consequences, perhaps even at some point deciding "no, I won't do that", or maybe just changing the circumstances so that it won't look so suspicious in the first place.

I myself once machined and built a small safe designed to hide in a vehicle as I frequently transported gold at the time. Unless there was proof that this guy was trying to do something illegal it sounds absolutely insane that he would be punished. The area that I traveled through was known to be quite dangerous and window smashing and grabbing at valuables was common. Matter of fact many gun owners need some sort of safe in their vehicles as there is a plague of people leaving guns under the car seats or between the seats or sometimes just under a newspaper on the seat which is dangerous in many ways including stopping to get gasoline or a cup of coffee. Criminals often get their guns by feeling around under car seats. Friday and Saturday nights are usually the good nights for that nonsense as people get drunk and leave their cars wide open with guns, wallets and all kinds of things in easy reach. Usually the only way these thieves get caught is by accident.

Once this guy knew who he was doing business with, it gave him two crappy options:

1) Turn informant for the government. His customers would know in a moment that he flipped once they see that he's moved out of his house and suddenly has the money to open a fancy storefront with all the bells and whistles (bugged to the gills). Once they figure that out, he and his family are as good as dead.

2) Take your chances in court. Since the federal government moved the venue to Kansas, that'll practically secure a conviction for an LA Latino who can easily be painted as a gangster living large while working on spec for the drug lords. Also, this sets an example for those who refuse uncle sams generous offer to turn informant.

I read this article before it was posted on Slashdot, so I have had a chance to think about it. My biggest problem with this case is the guy's credibility. When it came time to make the money (lots of money) installing the traps he was content to play dumb. When it came time to cooperate with the Fed's after reality caught up to the guy all of a sudden he was in so much fear for his life about these guys that cooperating the Feds (they offered a sweetheart deal) was inconceivable to him.

Let's put it this way, it would be a little bit like one of the guys in Columbia that makes private submarines in the middle of jungle claiming that he thought they were for recreational purposes. This guy knew damn well what his traps were being used for and went right on making them and profiting off of them anyways. Point being that the guy knowingly facilitated the drug trade for profit, how is he any different from a dealer or a crooked border agent?

One of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence was that the British government was "transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences". The Founders believed that any alleged crimes should be prosecuted in the jurisdiction where they occurred and that defendants should be tried by a jury of their peers. This was codified in the Sixth Amendment: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed..."

It seems clear that this section of the Constitution was violated here. Anaya was prosecuted in Kansas, a state where he had apparently never set foot, on the grounds that some of his customers had smuggled drugs there using his secret compartments. But this meant that he would not be tried by a jury of his peers – Californians who are racially diverse, familiar with high tech, and understand that rubbing elbows with the occasional shady person doesn't mean you are necessarily a criminal yourself. Instead he would be tried by a jury in Kansas, a state which is almost all-white and which is full of (let's be honest) fascists.

This is far from the only outrage in this case – it never should have been prosecuted in the first place, and the 24-year sentence is utterly absurd for any offense that doesn't involve death or serious bodily harm – but it's one that hasn't been mentioned so far, and may have been key to Anaya's conviction.

What happened in this article would be the equivalent of a person walking up to a gun shop and saying 'Hi, I need to buy a gun that shoots people really fast, and a ton of bullets because I'm going to kill some people' and the guy selling it to him.

TFA is quite specific that he discovered what they were using the traps for, and went ahead and installed one into a co-hort of the first drug dealer who broke his because he stuffed it with $800K in cash. after he fixed it, he charged them to fix it, a

The guy saw the truck contained $800k in legal tender. Is it illegal to possess that much cash?Some managers adapt policy of hush-hush cash transport: instead of armored van and very visible escort they choose inconspicuous vehicles and security through obscurity. Whether it's wise is moot - it's legal.

There is a big difference between prosecuting a make of a Claw Hammer because it was used in a murder and prosecuting a make of a gun. A gun is for killing or maiming people and is not built for killing people. A claw hammer is built for driving nails and not built for killing people.

I don't think gun makers should be prosecuted either as I think the important thing is the killer's intent.

This case is even worse than the gun case, though. If a safe is bought and used to hide someone's stash does that make the safe maker liable? I would say hell no. I would say the case of secret compartments is more dubious, but there are tons of things it could be used legally for and I don't think the manufacturer of that hiding place has anything to do with the issue.

Yes in some instances gun makers and safe makers could be liable. If, in the gun instance, it can be proven the sold or otherwise provided a gun knowing or any person can "reasonably" assume that the gun would be used to commit a crime. This case isn't about he made secret compartments so he went to jail, it is about the government saying he knew (or again, he reasonably should have known) that his compartments were being used for transoporting illegal goods. The crux of this case is that he helped a guy

Having $800K in cash you can't account for is going to get you into the territory of seizure laws, unless you can account for where you got it (and the onus is on you to prove that).

And, sadly, once he saw it, and reasonably knew what the second one was likely to be used for.. he was screwed. Because either he said nothing and became complicit, or he turned in some shady people who might not be understanding of that.

If he'd never seen what was inside, and never agreed to make another one, he'd probably have been shielded with "your honor, I have no idea what he kept in there".

But once he asked if there was anything he needed to worry about, and saw that much cash, and then made another one for them... well, I feel bad for the guy.

If I put it in my safe am I suddenly some sort of drug lord?

Depending on how much cash, if you were found with it you might need to prove it's legally obtained. Trying to deposit $10K or more (or whatever it is) into the bank in cash is going to get flagged as well.

Not only that but being a snitch would still leave him open to prosecution because he would be essentially incriminating himself. Instead of just being prosecuted, he will be subject to reprisals before going to jail and after going to jail.

There is broadly applicable principle that laws should not usually yield counter intuitive results. If they do, the odds favor the law itself being unjust. In this case, we're punishing a harmless-but-stupid mechanic for making otherwise legal car customizations only because our perverse drug laws created an unreasonable situation. Also, the DEA and DOJ got pissed that he feared the drug dealers more than them.

There is ample evidence [spiegel.de] that drug prohibition causes crime and prevents treatment, making all the DEA agents, DOJ prosicutors, and prison contractors who lobby for unjust intimidating laws wholly responsible for the drug related deaths, addiction cases, etc. All the ridiculous scenarios like asset forfeiture cases or locking up mechanics who make otherwise legal mods flow entirely from the underlying corruption in our prison-industrial-complex.

There is one small measure I'd suggest that might reduce the problem somewhat : Do not permit federal prosecutors to become federal judges or win primaries for elected office. Any time we hear about a proposed judicial appointment or a new candidate in some race, just google them and find their past jobs. If they were a federal prosecutor, then google more to find if they ever brought charges under the CFAA, DMCA, etc. or if any drug cases stand out as unjust. If so, then make a stink online to help derail their career advancement. If federal prosecutors cannot usually become federal judges or representatives then they'll lose considerable lobbying power over time.

There is what's right, and then there's what's true.
The accounting saying you should or shouldn't have $800k is how they determine if it's their business.
It is right that the money you have is yours, and yours to do anything legal with (and illegal, if you accept those consequences).
It is true that you cannot simply walk into most U.S. banks, auto dealers, etc, plop down $10k or more, and have a normal transaction. In fact, making multiple/perfectly legal/ transactions, totalling $10k or more in a short span of time, can get you arrested for evading the laws covering transactions over $10k, because by making transaction below what the law sets as a limit, you are, in the eyes of the law,/evading/ the limit. And that's... not right.

Blue-Collar Man: Three months ago I was offered a job up in the hills. A beautiful house with tons of property. It was a simple reshingling job, but I was told that if it was finished within a day, my price would be doubled. Then I realized whose house it was.Dante: Whose house was it?Blue-Collar Man: Dominick Bambino's.Randal: "Babyface" Bambino? The gangster?Blue-Collar Man: The same. The money was right, but the risk was too big. I knew who he was, and based on that, I passed the job on to a friend of mine.Dante: Based on personal politics.Blue-Collar Man: Right. And that week, the Foresci family put a hit on Babyface's house. My friend was shot and killed. He wasn't even finished shingling.Randal: No way!Blue-Collar Man: (paying for coffee) I'm alive because I knew there were risks involved taking on that particular client. My friend wasn't so lucky. (pauses to reflect) You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this... (taps his heart) not his wallet

That he freaked out and said told them to remove the money and “I don’t want to know about this. I don’t want any problems.” Seems like a good indication that he did in fact think it was likely the result of some sort of criminal activity. That he then took another job from them to build a hidden compartment in another vehicle puts him pretty clearly in the breaking the law category (you can argue the law is stupid, but it is what it is).

Of course this guy gets 24 years in prison for indirectly helping out drug traffickers move millions of dollars around. HSBC helps drug traffickers move billions of dollars around and all the people involved get a total of 0 days in prison.

Indeed. I own several dozen guns - almost all of which I shoot regularly and none of which have ever killed someone.

As a matter of fact, if a gun is "meant" for killing people, considering that there are approximately 200 million guns in the US and 11,000 gun deaths per year in the US, then even if you consider every single one of those deaths to have been caused by a different firearm (which isn't true, but that's a "worse case scenario"), then every year 99.9945% of those guns are used for something other than what they're "meant" for since they didn't kill anyone.

It's not illegal to manufacture or sell something that is eventually used in a crime.

It *IS* illegal to provide material support for a criminal act. That makes you one of the criminals.

So, if I make guns that are sold at retail and a criminal comes and buys them at a store and then uses them in a crime, not my fault. But if I sell a few crates of guns to a visitting African warlord for cash, well....

If I have a business installing hidden compartments in cars, no problem. If I find out one of my customers is using the compartments to smuggle materials and I continue to serve that customer, I'm no longer just installing hidden compartments, I'm PARTICIPATING IN THE SMUGGLING.

The guy wasn't jailed for making the compartments. He was jailed for being part of the smuggling scheme.

Firearms are designed for one purpose: to accelerate a small hunk of metal and/or plastic in a linear direction of the operator's choosing, at a very high rate of speed. PERIOD - that's what they are designed to do.

What the operator chooses to point said firearm at is NOT an aspect of the tool itself, but rather a consequence of the operator's decision.

Parent must be a public union employee.Private Unions can be good or bad. If they get too bad they no longer have a job. (Ask the Bakers at Hostess)Public Unions ARE BAD! In private unions there is management vs union. Balance can be struck.In Public Employee Unions there can be no balance as the management (Politicians) are put into office with the union funds.Why people can not see this as a horrible situation that can never work out well I will never understand.

Parent must be a public union employee.Private Unions can be good or bad. If they get too bad they no longer have a job. (Ask the Bakers at Hostess)Public Unions ARE BAD! In private unions there is management vs union. Balance can be struck.In Public Employee Unions there can be no balance as the management (Politicians) are put into office with the union funds.Why people can not see this as a horrible situation that can never work out well I will never understand.

The Hostess situation had nothing to do with the unions. The company was sold to private investors who stole all the retirement accounts and decided to gut the business and sell the brand... but they had contracts to get out of. So they gave themselves huge bonuses and cut worker pay until the workers finally stopped working, figured they'd milked it for what it was worth, and sold the assets. You'll be able to buy Twinkies again soon, because the brand was auctioned off to the highest bidder to repay the investors (who also got paid earlier as owners in the form of retirement money funneled into payouts).

The only way the unions failed in this situation is that they weren't powerful enough.

There was no transaction.
Mr. Anaya is not a mandatory reporter of a cash transaction to begin with.
For all Mr. Anaya knew, the money was withdrawn legally from an institution required to report, why should the onus/burden of enforcing the law fall to a car customizer?
They're obviously just smacking him down for not playing nice nice in their ever plodding damn fool idiotic crusade against drugs.
I don't think this sentence will stand on appeal.
IANAL though.

Disagree. Some people keep cash, and what better place to keep it than a secret compartment. Just because you don't keep your money in a bank doesn't mean you're a criminal. Unless he had specific knowledge of his customer's criminal activity, just finding cash doesn't imply anything other than that dude is rich as hell

1. The "war on drugs" has had a certain preventative effect on my life. I knew it was wrong. It was harder to get. I still had tried MJ but I was a teenager -- it's what we do. Didn't do much for me other than make me cough and smell bad. My hate/fear of needles prevented me from trying anything more serious... and I probably would have tried acid if the opportunity ever came about, but it didn't.

But I am an individual and I am not all that "typical" in the way I think, reason or behave.

2. The "war on drugs" has created additional organized crime and created additional demand for weapons and is the cause of loss of life not only for those directly involved in the trade, but for many, many innocents as well. It has undoubtedly derailed the lives of many who feel the mainstream life style of working for a living and being a good consumer is not good enough for them.

3. I hold the food industry responsible for their selection of ingredients which has led to epidemic rates of diabetes and obesity in the USA. People are not given options or opportunity to buy healthy foods at competitive prices while the most commonly (ab)used ingredients are subsidized by the government. The selection of these diabetes/obesity causing ingredients should be regulated and restricted as they are in other nations because restricting them show positive results in health which lowers healthcare costs and all of that. So making bad ingredients harder to get would likely result in many positive changes.

4. But if you transfer that line of thinking to drugs, we now have a kind of argument in favor of the war on drugs. There are some differences, of course. No one is likely to take up arms in order to trade in HFCS drinks or foods laced with high carbohydrate cereal fillers. But perhaps it just says the war on drugs, (the prohibition) simply goes too far while regulation would be good enough.

5. People have a problem with not knowing the difference between "legal" and "good." For some reason, people tend to believe if it's allowed, it's good. "Legal == right." So by making something "legal" it is naturally feared that the use and abuse of drugs would go up. It wouldn't affect me, but I am not typical. But on the other hand, what will the math say? More people getting high and dying from overdoses -- will it be higher or lower than the death tolls now. And if drugs are legalized and regulated, the associated "support" criminal activity will unquestionably lose support so there will be less gun violence, less gang activity and all of that. There will still be junkies burglarizing and robbing people but that's usually not an organized criminal effort.